My grandparents Annie Maria Faithfull and Emmanuel James Lutman were married in Southwick, Hampshire in1906, and their wedding photo which used to hang in my granny’s house is now owned by my mother. All the other people in the photo are Annie’s relations, except a boy aged around 10 dressed in a white suit at the extreme left of the picture.
As a child, my mother asked my granny about this photo, and enquired who was this boy? The answer was, “He is Tommy Randall, the son of your father’s half-brother Tom.” Mum particularly remembers this since she had another Uncle Tom, her mother’s brother, and did not know that her father also had a brother Tom. Her father was killed during World War 1, and the only member of his family she remembers clearly was her Aunt Mary Mellish.
Emmanuel Lutman’s parents were Alfred Lutman and Elizabeth Randall, and my research has shown that Elizabeth had a son John William Randall born in 1860 in Soberton before she settled with Alfred. (She also had a daughter Mary Randall in 1863, Mum’s Aunt Mary, who later married Fred Mellish.)
In the 1881 census, Thomas Randall aged 20 born in Soberton is listed living with his grandmother Mary Ann Randall, matching the name and age of Elizabeth’s mother. Therefore I assume that this man was actually Elizabeth’s son John William, but commonly known as Tom. Possibly this was to distinguish him from his uncle, Elizabeth’s brother born 1848, also called John William Randall.
In the 1891 census, John William Randall aged 30 is listed living with two of his sisters (Emily and Elizabeth Lutman) in Portsmouth, but no wife or son. But in the 1901 census John William Randall aged 41 is listed as a widow living with his son aged 17 (i.e. born 1883/4), also called John William Randall and born in Herne Bay, Kent. (So where was the son and his mother in 1891 ?). But there is no other son, and the 17-year-old would be too old (22 in 1906) for the wedding photo.
I have searched the Birth and Marriage index registers at the Family Records Centre in London, but I can find no plausible record of any marriage of John William Randall born 1860, nor of the birth of any children callled John or Thomas at all (even in 1883), so there is no trace of the Tommy Randall in the photo.
The only records I can find have the surname spelled Randell, and appear to relate to the J.W. Randall born 1848: his marriage in 1880 to Emily Scott in Herne Bay, Kent; and the birth and death of a son John in 1883 in Herne Bay. Interestingly, the 17-year-old John listed in the 1901 census was also born in Herne Bay. But this cannot be the same boy, since there is a death record for a child of 0 years in 1883.
So the mystery remains: who was Tommy Randall in the photo, who was his mother, and when and where was he born ?